After missing two games with injury, Curry scores 24 points as Warriors hang on for a 127-125 road victory in Toronto.
After spectacular first half, they need late defense and jumper from Durant to top Raptors
TORONTO >> Too many plays unfolded that captured the Warriors’ dominant talent and swift ball movement. Too many plays transpired that reflected the Warriors’ complacency and sloppiness.
Yet, Warriors forward Kevin Durant has reminded himself throughout his 11-year NBA career to have a “next-play mentality.” After all, Durant could determine whether the Warriors would walk off the court feeling relieved or frustrated.
So with the Warriors nursing a one-point lead over Toronto with 40 seconds remaining, Durant refused to give an inch of space to Raptors forward DeMar DeRozan as DeRozan hoisted a 18foot jumper that clanked off the rim. Moments later, Durant set a screen for Warriors guard Stephen Curry, who found Durant open for a 22-foot jumper.
The basket with 34 seconds remaining became the defining play that secured the Warriors’ 127-125 victory over the Raptors on Saturday — the Warriors’ 12th consecutive road win.
“DeMar is a phenomenal player, man. It’s hard to stop him. You can’t stop him,” said Durant, who scored 25 points on 10-of18 shooting and surpassed former Warriors forward Antawn
Jamison for 43rd place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.
“I tried to get a good contest on his shot. I’m glad he missed that one. The next play, I moved on and tried to make the shot.”
If only the Warriors (35-9) could have adopted that mentality for the whole game.
The Warriors strung together what coach Steve Kerr considered “probably the best offensive half of basketball I can ever remember.”
They held a 81-54 halftime lead after shooting 71.1 percent from the field, recording 16 assists and committing one turnover.
Warriors guard Klay Thompson, who had 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting in the half, made a baseline jumper in the second quarter that caused Raptors forward Serge Ibaka to fall to the ground, prompting the Warriors’ bench to groan in laughter.
The lone exception to the Warriors’ flawless execution? In the second quarter, Durant missed a one-handed dunk that caused rapper Drake to talk trash from his courtside seat before Durant answered with a twohanded dunk on the next possession.
“I hated missing that one. I had to ignore him,” Durant said, smiling. “I heard him talking some trash, too, on the sideline. I made up for it on the next play.”
Nonetheless, the Warriors played well enough that Kerr praised his players about their season-high first-half performance in the locker room. As Thompson mused about Kerr, though, “he definitely jinxed us.”
The Raptors outscored (29-12) the Warriors, 3619, in the fourth quarter while the Warriors shot 38.9 percent from the field and Toronto shot 62.5 percent from 3-point range.
The Warriors also recorded seven of their 20 fouls in the final period.
“We fouled too much and killed our own rhythm,” said Warriors forward Draymond Green, who had 14 points and eight assists. “We allowed them to get in rhythm.”
It did not help that the Warriors played on the second night of a back-toback and their fifth game in eight days. Or that Warriors forward Andre Iguodala missed the second half because of a strained hip flexor.
Or that, after he took a hard fall and landed on his elbow following a drive to the basket, Curry missed two consecutive foul shots as his team held a 123-122 lead with 45.2 seconds left.
“That rarely happens,” said Curry, who said he experienced it once before in Toronto despite shooting 90.3 percent from the foul line during his nine-year NBA career.
“I don’t know what it is. I shot on these hoops a lot when my pops played.”
Nonetheless, Curry redeemed himself as he made two foul shots for a 127-125 lead that “sealed the deal” with 2.5 seconds left. After missing the past two games with aggravated soreness in his right ankle, Curry also posted 24 points on 6-of12 shooting in 35 minutes.
“It’s sore. But it felt good enough to play,” said Curry, who initially sat out 11 games last month.
“As long as I don’t have any more incidents, I can continue to play and it’ll continue to heal. I’m probably exactly where it was the last time I came back. I don’t feel limited out there. But you just feel it. As I continue to go, it’ll get closer and closer to 100 percent. Hopefully I don’t miss any more games.”
With Curry back on the floor and the outcome still in question, the Warriors turned to Curry and Durant to run pick-and-roll sets to take advantage of matchups.
They do not normally do that, as it contradicts the team-oriented play that Kerr preaches.
“The game gets stagnant if you just run pickand-roll over and over again,” Kerr said.
“You have personnel around those two for that play to make sense. If you do it the whole game, other guys don’t get involved.”
But after Durant made that defensive stop on DeRozan, another pickand-roll play set up Durant’s open look that allowed the Warriors to escape with a win.
“It’s nice to have that option every time we go down to do that, but we don’t want to have to rely on that,” Durant said. “It was good to have it in our back pockets. I’m glad it worked for us tonight.”
And after it worked, the Warriors walked off the floor emboldened with both the win and their ability to clean up their own mistakes. So as the Warriors face Cleveland on Monday in what could be another NBA Finals rematch, at least Green sounded skeptical that the Raptors could disrupt such a storyline. After all, the Raptors could not finish their run against the Warriors.
“We can’t give them any more attention because we won’t play them again,” Green said. “If you’re asking if we’ll meet them in the Finals, that’s a long road ahead to get there.”